James Shaw

For those who question Hawking's latest twist on Black Holes this may suit you.

Stephen Hawking's New Black Hole Theory: Scientists Remain Unconvinced:
http://www.space.com/24454-stephen-hawking-black-hole-theory.html

This is getting a little boring!
- Jim

Rongnongno Loc: FL

I do not find it boring just not all that interesting.

Everything in astronomy is based on observations that cannot really be verified until we get there. I do not dismiss it, I just find it, well w/o application in our everyday life. The latest pictures I saw made me think: I saw that structure in a fungus in my backyard which in turns made me wonder about perspective and relative size. If we are part of something able to look at a fungus, how small are we, really? Crazy thought but then again an observation w/o verifiable base, worse once there would we see the same thing? I think not, we would be too close and lack the perceptive so are we really just onto the fungus instead of looking at it? Crazier thought...

I like dreams and dreamers but then again I also like living in the past where thoughts are the only present we really have, if that much. (I am nuts, what do you expect from me???)

We went to the moon, developed incredible technology to get there and that technology is only starting to trickle down* in our lives. So dreamers are needed but it becomes reality if one guy goes: HEY! WE CAN DO IT!

Going to the moon was SF now it is reality. the Chinese being the new one there.

* It took forty years for microwave to enter our lives as a common, affordable household. The first practical use was in radars during WWII and the company making the core of the radars (microwave device) had to scramble to find a use for their overstock when the war was over.. No demand for it. Sink or swim situation. The swimming came when one engineer found that it could heat objects next to it, an accidental discovery, just as penicillin...

wireman8 Loc: Toledo, Ohio

Ok we're looking at light from stars from millions of years ago, alright prove it, don't give some kind of magical formula, explain it in English.

amyinsparta Loc: White county, TN

"However, he contended that the radiation would be so scrambled that scientists could never work backwards to understand what fell into the black hole in the first place. This violates a basic piece of quantum theory, the idea that information cannot be destroyed."

Hawking is not a big fan of Quantum Physics. He is not a big fan of information living forever. He is an atheist and thinks that once the material form dies, that's it. So for him to accept the theory that information never dies would be a complete turn around of his thinking. He spends an inordinate amount of his time trying to undo all metaphysical thinking, which is that information(the Quantum Field; Source Field, etc.), is eternal and we can access it at any time. It basically is "God". jmo

James Shaw

Hi wireman8. Gee what a challenging question. I am not qualified "to give some kind of magical formula" account, but here is how my simple mind understands it:

Every thing that we see (or, for that matter, that a camera's light sensor detects) has already happened before our eyes or camera's sensor detects it. For example, someone lights a candle in a window across the street. The candle light was there before our our eyes detected it, because it takes time for light to travel from the candle, across the street, to our eyes. Now, since light travels at a speed of approximately 186,000 miles per SECOND, the interval between the time the candle first shown its light and the time when our eyes first detected the candle light is a very small interval, indeed. It's almost as if the two events happen simultaneously, but they did not.

Now, at a greater distance: if the sun were to burn out right now, you wouldn't know it for 8 minutes, because it takes about 8 minutes for the sun's light (traveling at that magic speed of 186,000 miles a SECOND) to reach earth. It takes about 8 minutes because the earth and sun are at a much greater distance (about 93 million miles) from our eyes than was the candle across the street.

Finally, at much greater distances: the light from a star that formed BILLIONS of years ago is still reaching earth, even though that star may have exploded and long since disappeared. When all of that star's light has reached earth, then and only then, will we know that the star no longer exists.

Something like that ....- Jim

bunuweld Loc: Arizona

Hard to explain in plain English. If you know about the Doppler effect, this applies to light as well as to the sound of a passing train, but the speed of light is millions of times faster than sound waves, so the Doppler effect for light cannot be measured just by eye-balling it the way we do with the train's sound by ear, The further the stars are from us, the more they turn to red, and even further, to infrared. That's one way of knowing the distance from Earth, or even better, with the Hubble telescope.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

So we live the past and the present exists only when we think. That is the time perception paradox as working on an idea is working on the past....